(BA) Genesis 1:1, ʾet

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31 July 2022 Navigate 'up' to the Genesis index: index-genesis.

There is a word in Hebrew that doesn't have an exact English counterpart, and which appears in Genesis 1:1 and throughout the Bible: ʾet, spelled alef, tav. The meaning of this word is simple -- it is usually a direct object marker. It marks the direct object of the sentence. If you said "I kicked the ball" in Hebrew, you'd put an ʾet before 'the ball': 'I kicked ʾet the ball.' When the direct object is not definite, it's not used. If you said "I kicked a ball" in Hebrew, you would not add an et. It's also dropped sometimes in poetry.

A secondary meaning of ʾet, less common but still something you'll see here and there, is as a rough equivalent to the English word 'with.'

There is a mystical interpretation that goes as follows. The Hebrew Aleph and Taw are the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and therefore the appearance of ʾet is the equivalent of the Greek expression "Alpha and Omega," and therefore a reference to Jesus Christ. This is reading too much into the text: ʾet is a simple grammatical feature, and appears in all sorts of passages where Jesus Christ could not possibly be referred to. There is no evidence for this "Alpha and Omega" reading, and so when you hear someone talking about "Alpha and Omega" being found in Genesis 1:1, it's a good sign that you're listening to someone who simply doesn't know what they're talking about.